In a live interview with BBC World News on February 20, Anthony Barkow, executive director of the Law School's Center on the Administration of Criminal Law, said that billionaire financier Allen Stanford will likely face criminal charges following the SEC's civil complaint accusing him of engaging in an $8 billion fraud involving high-yielding certificates of deposits sold by an offshore bank in Antigua.

"The Department of Justice likes to bring these kinds of cases simultaneously to the SEC if it can," Barkow said. "It didn't do that here but what happened was probably the SEC felt it needed to move quickly in order to . . . prevent any further dissipation of the assets that the company holds, if it really does hold any assets at this point, so that victims don't lose even more money."

Barkow said he believes criminal charges are imminent.

"The Department of Justice probably just wasn't ready to proceed at the same time, but I would expect that criminal charges would be brought in this case against [Stanford]," Barkow said. "They would probably echo and mirror the civil charges brought by the SEC, and I would expect that to happen relatively soon."

A run on both of Stanford’s banks in Antigua began last week as news spread that a judge in the United States had frozen the assets of Stanford Financial Group, the company based in Houston that sold the offshore bank’s certificates.